


i'll bring you tea and honey (until you do)

by thetaserpentis



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Deke Shaw-Centric, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:40:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25880743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetaserpentis/pseuds/thetaserpentis
Summary: Deke used to know the Lighthouse.Deke used to know the Lighthouse, but this isn’t his Lighthouse.[After Fitz's psychic split Jemma can't sleep. Deke can't either.]
Relationships: Deke Shaw & Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 14
Kudos: 84





	i'll bring you tea and honey (until you do)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [i'll bring you tea and honey (until you do) | я буду приносить тебе чай с медом (пока все не пройдет)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29734026) by [Summer__child](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Summer__child/pseuds/Summer__child)



> The title comes form the Winnie the Pooh quote that goes: 
> 
> "I don't feel very much like Pooh today," said Pooh.  
> "There there," said Piglet, "I'll bring you tea and honey until you do."
> 
> This is a Deke Shaw - centric fic that takes place after the events of 5x14.

Deke used to know the Lighthouse. He used to have every level memorized with its main function. He knew all the pipes and passageways he could use to escape the Kree or roaches or anybody with a gun. He knew where to put the Framework to avoid unwelcome visitors. He knew the best places for traps, best corners for quiet, best areas for business, best hallways for trade, and the best places to strike up deals. 

Deke used to know the Lighthouse, but this isn’t his Lighthouse. It’s all too surreal to be comfortable. He could recognize some rooms; he knows what they will become. But Deke cannot say what they are. He knows the large storage room was a processing plant in his time, but he can’t say what exactly the room holds. Deke knows English. He can read most of the labels, but he still doesn’t know what lives inside those cardboard boxes. 

Deke knows he can walk freely on the third floor- that he doesn’t have to live in fear of getting mauled apart. He knows he can travel across the tenth level hallways without worrying about running into any Kree. Everyday, he sees people (mostly Daisy) use computers, and he knows that soon those computers will be inaccessible to humans. He can use the elevator to visit any floor he wants. He just can. Despite being unable to leave the Lighthouse, Deke still has more freedom than he knows what to do with. 

Against his better judgement, Deke searches for the dead end hallway the Framework had occupied. The hallway, of course, doesn’t exist. Deke supposes it won’t for another decade. He looks for his bedroom. If it weren’t for pure reflexes, Deke knows he wouldn’t have found it. The rooms are all too similar now- carbon copies of each other. Deke’s room is the same as the rest. It’s empty. The air is almost unbreathable, incredibly stale. None of this bothers him quite as much as the cleanliness. He never used to keep his stuff lying around, what with all the thieves, but Deke finds it impossible to digest the cleanliness. 

The layer of grime and rust built up over the years is gone along with any world Deke knew. 

He is unsure what to do with this information.

There is a lot to explore in the Lighthouse, and although it makes him feel melancholy, Deke roams all hours of the day. No one misses him, and he’s less trouble this way. He knows his absence is likely a relief. All his walking could be practice anyhow- practice for when he got to go outside and walk around in the real world. 

(He’s heard of weather, but he has never felt rain. He’s never felt snow or wind. He has felt the sun though, and that experience is vexed. It satisfies him, but he cannot stop his yearning for more. He’s heard of millions of places around the world. He knows about the different villages- how homes in North are different from homes in South, and laws in East are different from laws in West. He knows there are tall birds called penguins that walk where it is always white. He knows about the giant monuments made by people, all bigger than the lighthouse he lived in- lives in. He knows about the Mariana Trench, and he knows it is the deepest part of the world. Deke knows it doesn’t even break the surface of Earth’s first layer, and he knows there is so much he has yet to see.) 

Deke doesn’t mean to wander as far as he does. He is usually an active thinker. (He always has to be in what he’s beginning to refer to as “Old Lighthouse.”) But his recent time travel has sent his brain into overdrive. There is too much to think about lately, so much to know and learn and feel. All his walking and thinking takes him far from the center of the Lighthouse, but Deke isn’t aware of where he is until he’s standing in front of the door. 

The room is just as cold, metal, and barren as all the others. Deke knows this is the same room as the room from his childhood, but there are no schematics on the walls. There is no one-person bed, no blankets on the floor for his parents. There is no rotting citrus peel on the cabinet, held onto well past its life span. There are no photos, drawings, or papers pinned to the door, walls, floor, desk. When his mother was killed, they took the papers down, tore them and took them like they did with his mother. After his father disappeared, they took the whole room, left Deke to sleep in the halls- no possessions, no protection. And now Deke lives where they had never been up at all. Here, he is the first person to enter. 

And all Deke has is the way the smell of oranges cling to his fingertips. 

Deke leaves the room with the same quietness he had entered with. It’s another reminder, among the many others, that this is not his Lighthouse. This is not his room, not really. He had never lived in it, did not grow up in it. 

He doesn’t want to walk anymore. The fear of encountering more unmade memories is too strong, and his head is starting to pound out of his skull. Instead, he travels back towards familiar territory. He takes the elevator and returns to “New Lighthouse” where the horrors of the day took place. 

Yeah, of course Deke wishes he had done more, but he didn’t. He watched Daisy beg and writhe in pain, and for the most part Deke doesn’t regret it. He isn’t noble and sacrificing like his grandparents- he’s selfish. And maybe that’s why they hate him so much. He does like Daisy. He has some sort of undeniable attraction towards her, some kind of admiration or crush, but at the end of the day Deke is a survivalist- not a hero, not a romantic. There was a gun pointed at him, so Deke held still and emotionless even as his grandparents tore themselves apart.

(He considers this cursed knowledge. He never had to worry about his family- not since they were all slaughtered, and though he’s only known the pair for roughly a week, Deke can’t help the connection this knowledge creates. He doesn’t know much about FitzSimmons, but he does know he wants them to live- to survive- and maybe, to love him.)

Deke doesn’t expect to stay long at Fitz’s cell. It’s the dead of night, and the man has probably fallen into restless sleep, but Deke can’t really help himself. He is impulsive in that way. And he is right- Fitz is asleep, curled in on himself and hidden in the dark corners of his cell. 

That is how he comes across Jemma instead.

He almost trips on her. Deke is busy peering through the glass, watching Fitz twitch in his sleep. He doesn’t see Jemma until his foot taps her knee. She’s no better. Her body is wound up tight- curled into a fetal position on the floor outside the cell. Her hair curtains her face, and her features are young and innocent in sleep. It feels wrong to see her like this- for Deke to know this is the source of him. He looks at his grandfather in a cell and his grandmother on the floor- both in fitful states of sleep- and he wonders what he may have inherited from them. He doesn’t consider himself very similar to them at all. 

Deke hesitates. The conversation they had earlier in the night likely left Jemma exhausted and overwhelmed by his presence. She had vomited at the idea of it. Deke hated to know what Fitz would think. He has known them for a week, and Deke had already proven to be a great disappointment. 

(But there it is again- unmistakable and inescapable. It is some inane desire to please, to love and be loved. It is a desire he had given up many years ago, but it has returned with the speed and intensity of a growing fire, and it is all because of a title- some name, some word.) 

“Jemma,” Deke shakes her awake. She startles, always alert and ready for another battle, or perhaps she had barely managed to sleep at all. “Sorry to wake you, Nana, but I don’t think the floor is the best place for you to be sleeping.” He means to call her that as a joke, and it still retains the lilt in his voice, but he cannot deny the way the title seems to ring against the metal walls. 

Her whole body seems to collapse on itself. The steadfastness, preparation, and adrenaline lets her go as no threat presents itself. She rubs at her eyes and lies back down on the hard unforgiving floor of the Lighthouse, and it is a feeling Deke remembers well. 

“You’ll hurt your back,” he insists, tacking on another joke for good measure, “And wouldn’t want that to happen- not in your ripe old age.” That gets a huff out of her. It’s a ghost of what could’ve been a laugh. She likely wasn’t quite ready for all the grandma jokes yet. 

“It’s alright, Deke. Go to sleep. I’ll be fine here.” Jemma leans back against the wall, her knees against her chest, and her eyes closed like she’s already asleep, but Deke knows better. 

“You know, I’m speaking from experience. Sleeping on the floor like that- that gives you all kinda cramps you wouldn’t even think of-”

“I’m alright here, Deke,” and when he hesitates, Jemma humors him and gives way, “I couldn’t sleep in my own bed.”

“Oh well, I couldn’t sleep either!” Deke agrees. He says it with such intensity. He’s grasping at straws, hoping to find familiar ground. He’s learned the hard way that no one cares about his time on Old Lighthouse, but it’s difficult to talk about here and now, when now constitutes such a short period of his life. “That’s why I’ve been walking around! I mean the bed was super uncomfy- I mean, not that I don’t like having a bed, and also maybe the time travel is messing with my sleep cycle-”

“I can’t sleep without Fitz,” Jemma admits. Her voice sounds worn and crackly and wet like the way stomping in puddles on the Lighthouse sounded. Deke isn’t good with vulnerability; he’s probably tried it more in the past few hours than he has in his entire life. Because dying or losing someone wasn’t foreign to Old Lighthouse. Deke found that out the second his parents died, and no one could care less about the starving snivelling boy in the hallway. 

He tries it anyway. “So um, I’ve never tried tea before.” He’s trying, okay?

Jemma looks at him like she can’t quite figure him out. On the Old Lighthouse that was a good thing; Deke didn’t want to be read- didn’t want to be known. But he wants Jemma to like him and maybe know him too if those two could possibly coexist. He wants to be a person who could be known. His whole life was just a fight for survival and sometimes, at least for him, all he could afford to be was a survivor. And Deke’s still trying to survive, but he has loose ties now too, and it makes him feel a little closer to being a human who might have a little more inside than fight. 

“I’ve also never tried that sandwich. My mom- she would not shut up about it. A hint of pesto aioli? No clue what that is.” He looks at Jemma and she looks back but she doesn’t laugh. She keeps looking at him like she’s searching and searching. He hopes she isn’t looking for pieces of Fitz. He knows he’s no Fitz. “And, like, camping. I’ve heard about camping, but it sounds awful. I mean the trees are huge. How would you even see anything? And bugs… I mean, I’ve heard about bugs, and if they’re anything like the roaches? Geez.” 

“Bugs are much smaller,” Jemma whispers, but she smiles at him for a brief moment. It’s one of those smiles where her nose wrinkles up just a little bit. Deke thinks he’s seen her give Fitz that type of smile before, so maybe it isn’t a bad thing. Deke isn’t super familiar with smiles. No one has ever smiled at Deke because they’re happy. Smiles on the Lighthouse meant people want something or need something or feel something (and it usually wasn’t love.) But ever since he’s met SHIELD he’s seen a lot of different smiles. They’re all a little different in miniscule ways, and he’s still trying to decipher them. 

“I guess I can see the point in camping,” he shrugs, finally takes a seat next to her, because if she smiled at him, maybe she wouldn’t mind his company so much. “All the people who talked about it- they missed it because they missed nature and stuff. I guess I wouldn’t really know. And the sky is super different. I didn't know that clouds were so unreliable. I mean I can’t imagine what it felt like for you guys, cause I’ve only felt the sun for like two minutes, but I already miss it. So I can’t imagine what it would be like for you to have it your whole life and then-” 

Deke cuts himself off abruptly because Jemma is starting to curl in on herself again. Her face pinches and contorts and Deke kicks himself. Talking was so much easier on the Lighthouse. People knew what they wanted and only ever asked for what they wanted. There was a way to things, but no one here was like that. They talk about things that Deke didn’t even know existed, and honestly, he’s tried the talking thing himself (just talk and talk and talk about whatever you know) but people usually didn’t care much for it. 

“Um, sorry,” Deke manages, “I didn’t mean to- I mean, you’ll totally not have to experience that because we’re gonna stop it.” Even as he says it the words sound fake- like a half ass attempt at encouraging a child. “And then, I’ll blink out of existence and you can go back to your regularly scheduled programming.” He says it like a joke, but Deke sort of hopes she’ll jump and say he’s wrong. He kind of hopes someone will miss him. Because the only people who will ever miss him (Tess, Flint, maybe) he’s actively working to make sure never exist.

But Jemma doesn’t move. She keeps staring holes into the cold metal floors. “I went to Peru once,” she says at last, “Did you know Peru has 32 different species of monkey?”

Deke isn’t sure what to think at first, but at some point he says, “32? That’s a lot. How many different types of monkeys can you have?” 

Jemma’s smiling again though, so Deke counts that as a victory. “Wait until you find out how many different types of dogs there are.” 

“I’ve heard about dogs!” They both wince at the way his voice echoes in the room. Deke doesn’t get up to check, but he waits for the sound of heavy footsteps and they don’t come. “I mean, people talked about them all the time. Like they loved them,” he says quieter this time. 

“I think you’d love them too.” Deke’s heard that statement a fair amount, but everyone says that to everybody. Everybody would love a dog. 

“Well, um, maybe at the end, you know, we’ll figure this out. And then I’ll get one. Or I’ll travel to Peru. See it all,” Deke turns to look at her, but he’s met with a face full of hair as her head settles on his shoulder. He’s not expecting it. Suddenly, Deke can only think about the way his back aches and the way the floor hurts his butt, but he already knows before he’s catalogued his pain that he isn’t moving soon. 

“Well, what do you want to see?” Jemma asks. Deke can’t tell for sure from this angle, but he thinks her eyes are closed. Her voice is heavy. “I’ve seen most of it.” 

“Of the world?” Jemma hums in response. Deke doesn’t really know what he does want to see. He wants to see everything, but he doesn’t know where to start. “So… you really don’t travel to the bottom of the ocean? Because I thought if you could go in the sky then maybe…” 

“No one goes there for fun, Deke. You’ll have to trust me on that one.” 

Her voice is bitter so Deke just says, “Oh sorry,” with the full intent of moving and talking and rattling on until it’s forgotten, but Jemma speaks first. 

“It’s alright.” 

Deke’s heard that phrase before in many different ways in many different contexts. He’s heard, “Deke, it’s alright,” like “We can handle it. Leave us alone.” He’s also heard “It’s alright,” like “It’s not alright, but let’s move on.” But Jemma says it like “It’s alright that you screwed up, and maybe that won’t have lasting effects on how I treat you as a person.” Deke likes that one best. 

Maybe he’s been uncharacteristically quiet, because Jemma pushes her head down into his shoulder until it is a heavy weight- a firm presence. Deke just tries to stay still and hold her up. “You’re very sweet.” 

And that- that catches Deke off guard. He’s been described as a lot of things (ugly, cheat, thief, snake- that one by his own grandfather) but he’s never been sweet before. It feels like he’s been hit over the head, so Deke just sits there and stares as the word replays over and over and over again in his head. 

(He knows it’s not necessarily true. Maybe he’s sweet to her, for two minutes, just because he wants to be liked (loved) but at the end of the day, Deke is still a survivor, and survivors are never sweet. They’re backstabbers and thieves and Deke thinks he’ll never grow out of that.)

“Are you going to tell me?” Jemma asks. Deke blinks, and when Jemma starts to lift her head, he shifts closer and puts his head on top of hers. He tries not to think too hard about the way her hair brushes his cheek or how nice it feels to have someone lean against him. He tries not to think about how maybe when he didn’t let her up, it was not for her sake, but for his. Either way, she stills and relaxes back into him, and Deke feels something along the lines of happiness. (And he knows it’s a fleeting, useless little emotion, but he lets himself feel it this time.) 

“Tell you what? About the Lighthouse?” 

“I’ve heard enough about the Lighthouse.” That’s usually what people say. “I meant about after.” 

“After… we save the world.” 

“Yeah. Where will you go?” 

Deke clearly doesn’t know much about anything, but he especially knows absolutely nothing about what he wants. It’s always one day at a time, and it still is. It’s a futile dream to think of the future- of himself in some later time doing different things and being a different person. Deke wants, but he doesn’t know what exactly. He wants this- wants to be a person, more than a survivor. 

“Well where are you from? Because… you know I’ve heard about different languages but everyone on the Lighthouse just spoke English, but they don’t speak it like you.” 

“England.” 

“Yeah sure. I’ll go there first. And then,” he scrubs his memory and tries to think of those world maps he saw on the walls. He tries to think of that little globe. “I’ll go up. To the top, where the white stuff is.” 

“Snow?” 

“Yeah.” 

“It’ll be cold.” 

“Then afterwards, I’ll go somewhere warm. Like a beach. And there will be waves and sunlight and sharks.” Deke waits a second for Jemma’s input, but her body grows heavier and her breathing slows, so he does what he does best and talks. “And then I’ll go on a boat. And I’ll get to see what it’s like to be surrounded by water. And if there’s somewhere on Earth where the sun never sets… that’s where I want to live.” 

He waits for Jemma to correct him or call him stupid, because the sun sets everywhere, and Deke knows enough about Earth from Framework Code to know that much. But instead she lets out one long breath. He almost thinks she’s really asleep until she says, “That’s where I’d want to live too.” 

Deke is quiet. He feels ugly and raw, but he feels real- like someone who thinks about things like the future and family and who they might be inside. Deke doesn’t know if he likes it, but Jemma seems to, and Deke likes that. “We’ll go somewhere warm. With grass and maybe some trees. And the weather’s gonna be great, lots of sun, and we can watch the clouds. I get it now- why people watch the clouds…”


End file.
